Science Faction: Science Fiction that isn't too far out there ...

Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser

OK, so they call it a Pulsed Energy Weapon now, and development work on it may even have been dropped. But then the British Army's unique SA80 bullpup design was originally conceived in the 1950's before being shelved in favour of a heavier round. Roll on 60 years and it's standard issue.

Scatkiewicz favours the variable powered, dark light version, somewhat smaller and more practical than the camped-up bad-boy accessory being put to work in the photo.

The NeuralNet

Today the Brain-Computer Interface helps us to move our wheelchairs or control a prosthetic leg, but in the future it will hook us up to just about every mobile phone, PC, domestic device and your networked weapon of choice. We’ll even refer to it as we do the web or a local area network.Petroff calls it the NeuralNet. Gone are the clunky head caps and mini-electrode implants. This is the “all over” replication of the brain within a brain. Born out of the Golden Age of medical research, it has finally become available to the well-to-do and the well-connected–anyone who is security-qualified and wants an edge in a highly competitive world.All it takes is a 30 minute out-patient procedure. A day or so later and the nanopelium neurons will line every pathway in the brain: they’ll automatically replace those neurons that wear out, improve the productivity of those that remain and keep you connected to your stock broker or your favourite social media.Mind, it’s elective surgery, so you’ll need a bag-full of money to get one.

The Democracy

I wonder how many readers of this post are aware that the “democracy” brokered between Britain and China on behalf of the Hong Kong people, is anything but democratic. Or that the government here owns all the undeveloped land and that despite covering some 1044 square kilometres, its population of 7 million is crammed into narrow strips of land with densities as high as 54,530 persons per square kilometre–in some cases living in apartments where one person enjoys just 12.9 square metres of living space. Or that a jumper-suicide can be cleaned up in less than an hour, with the remaining tenants being none-the-wiser.Hong Kong is a place of contradictions. It is democratic, and yet it isn’t, not really. It is part of China, and yet it remains separate to it. It is wealthy, and yet, 45.8% of all its housing is either publicly owned or is subsidised; the majority of its people crammed into well-organised, if claustrophobic, sky-towers.The oddity of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LEGCO) is the Functional Constituency. Fully half of LEGCO’s 70 seats are allocated to the elected representatives of constituencies considered so vital to the on-going development of Hong Kong–to Big Business–that they cannot be trusted in the hands of the people. Instead, they go to industry cabals, representing Finance, Financial Services, Real Estate and Construction and so on. That’s 35 seats for which there are then only 212,227 eligible voters. The smallest of them–by voter numbers–is Insurance: it has only 144 registered voters. This is akin to the boards of JP Morgan and Citibank sending a joint representative to Congress. Yep, this is the democracy that China fears so much that it won’t allow its leader to call himself Prime Minister–he must be called the Chief Executive. And he must be elected by a 1200-strong specially appointed Election Committee, all approved by Beijing.Land hoarding creates another oddity. Hong Kong is a wealthy-ish place, but the government determines how much land to release for development each year; and there are only a half-dozen companies that can afford to turn up to the auction. This is bound to distort the economy, and it does. It hurts everyone. After all, if you took out a HK$5m mortgage for a HK$8m, 1000 square foot apartment–still more than an hour’s commute from the city–you absolutely need to stay in work. And given there are so few employment protections, you need to keep your boss happy. You also need for interest rates to stay low and you need for the currency to remain stable. You crave stability–at almost any cost.This concentration of power in the hands of generally unrepresentative Representatives and the largely man-made land scarcity distorts everything; and this distortion benefits some more than others. Let’s consider transport. When a new commuter line goes in, the MTR is given the land across which it can lay its tracks. It is also given land on which to put its stations. This then gives the company (the MTR is a publicly owned company listed on the HKSE) a license to print money in the property game. Over each station they build malls. They build residential towers. They operate residential maintenance contracts, they maintain our residential security and organise the clean up after people jump from their towers. They build railway towns.I find the dynamics that weave their way through this City interesting. After all, if you look deep enough, you’ll find everything you need for a good fiction: a corrupted (at least highly compromised) “democracy”; a dozen or so “too big to fail” families (all of whom cast long, hard-to-see shadows in the corridors of power); the hoarding and uneven distribution of land; a super-power-in-the-making just across the border; and a bunch of local politicians and business leaders kow-towing in that direction looking for hand-outs … there’s even an ageing, weakened super-power, desperately trying to manage the region’s future.And so Hong Kong is the inspiration for Go Down City, the capital city of Trevon, a planet in the Outer-Rim, as depicted in the novel Scat. Go Down is also filled with well-educated, “can-do” people. It is even rich in resources. It is certainly wealthy. But it is also tied to business–a single company–and the residents there live their lives under a constitution that you and I couldn’t possibly sign up for. And yet, for a desperate Earth, looking to import the cheap resources it needs to sustain its population, this is the way forward. This is the compromise our governments have made on behalf of the 21bn of us on Earth who can never afford to leave.Until, that is, an ex-Marine is pushed too far in the wrong direction. When he finally realises he has nothing of true worth to lose …